Profile Information

For me, SEO merges my two passions - business development and the internet. Having a good strategy plus knowing how and where to implement it is the key. I've always loved strategy games and playing this one gets me paid too, life is good.

Blog Comments & Posts

Since my background is more in web development and I've gotten into SEO only recently this is my first post here. I hope you find a use for it and please feel free to make any suggestions/comments. More development around the SEOmoz API is good for everyone so I'm sharing my first experience in developing a tool utilizing the great information provided by the API. To implement this yo...

I think the social results like this have been around for awhile, Google has been testing them, and they bring a good CTR (click-through-rate), so they are promoting them more. I used to see maybe 1 or 2 social results, now sometimes I see 3 or 4 (for trending topics especially). Its an interesting way for Google to keep the organic search results more relevant. However, these are only personalized results, so a good percentage of times this won't happen at all if the user is logged out or doesn't have a Google profile.
This is all part of larger strategy by Google of diversifying their organic search results to give you different rankings based on traditional methods (on-page, links) for the first few results, then maybe a few personalized results based on geography or your social circle, as well as trying out a few new things Google pulls out crazy random articles and sometimes copied search results pages. Search won't be perfect with social but it can be better adding trust factor which is its biggest benefit. They can't read minds yet so they have to give you the choices they think are the best candidates for the answer to your question.

Great WhiteBoard Friday for our current times, I've seen a few sites go up and down in the rankings - a lot more turbulence than usual for sure. Some of it has been good, some of it not so good. The best takeaway I got here was to be proactive about maintaining that link profile, not forgetting about links that previous SEOs might have made - I hate cleaning up other peoples messes but sometimes it needs to be done. You can't sit back and not think that old links that somebody else made won't affect whatever site you are working on. Perhaps some people might be inspired to take action against the scraper sites out there but it looks like Google has taken care of some of them. The SERPs are looking quite different lately, I'm still on the fence as to how improved the results are. Improved sometimes but not always and there is still a few bugs in the system that need to be worked out before it goes worldwide.

Wow I'm truly impressed with your work. I understand the amount of time it takes to learn the quirks of each individual API. I have been dreaming about making a tool like yours - but haven't had the time. Though back in May I made a simple tool with the Google Search API and the SEOmoz API but yours is much more complete. I didn't try to host it though I just posted the code and instructions. There is so much information and so many tools out there to play with - its an admirable skill to be able to put them altogether like you did to make a useful tool. Cudos to you and keep up the development!

Everything looks good from what I've looked at so far. Some sites dropped, some went up. It looks more dramatic than it is sometimes given that its on a 100 point scale. So a drop of 10-15 points if you are at 40 seems pretty harsh but in reality isn't so bad.

But SEOmoz with a DA of 45? I thought it would be more around 60-70 at least. Strange but true..

I find PA / DA to be a good metric to use when I'm looking for link opportunities. But I don't use it as a benchmark for SEO performance reporting. mozRank better measures raw linkbuilding efforts so using it as a benchmark is more useful in my opinion.

For those of us who can't go to these conferences, re-caps like this are really valuable. I especially liked the PR stuff - I'm not doing enough of that kind of thing and it is a really great link building strategy for businesses. I knew about PRweb but haven't used it due to the prices. But I will check out PRESSfeed, muckrack, and HARO for sure.

I agree with your assessment of Klout - it is my favorite tool of this kind. Finding influencers is a really rewarding activity, this can't be overstated. I find myself spending much more time on twitter than facebook these days - it is much easier to connect with like-minded people.

Hey great link thanks for that! Slide 25 about the $50 billion gap in internet advertising was a real eye opener and slide 26 shows how cheap internet advertising is compared with other forms.

I didn't see anything really specific to people's mobile device usage besides the iPad being used more like a computer than a typical mobile device. Certainly usage is increasing overall but the big question for me is: How are people using their mobile devices?

Aha! I knew something evil was amiss. Ok it is not so evil (not like direct spam SMS from the carriers), but interesting post. I have been largely ignoring mobile search, thank you for reminding me of how important it is becoming.

I still don't think a lot of people make big purchases or decisions on their mobile phones. They may but an app or music, but I believe (without evidence but hear me out) that mobile search is a bit less serious. It is way to pass time, play games, and find some quick information but I think people largely do their serious research / purchasing on their home computers. Anyone have any statistics / articles about this topic? I'm very interested to be proven wrong or right :)

It seems like whenever I have a problem with a web service these days I turned to Twitter to find out what is going on - unless twitter is down :) . I thought the SEOmoz team did a good job of understanding this and giving updates. The webapp is in beta but people are accustomed to the quality of the tools here - even the tools in Labs work great most of the time so the expectations were high.

FYI I'm still having some problems with the webapp but the support team has been responding (hi Aaron Wheeler) to all my requests and have been very helpful.

I think the Office Space video was a great, humorous way to show that the SEOmoz team was just as frustrated as everyone else (if not more so).

Twitter seems to be the best way now to, when there is a problem, say "hey sorry we are working on it" to let people know they are aware of the problem so people aren't left thinking "am I the only one?".

Questions I hate:
1. How much time will it take to build x amount of links? (or how many links can you build in an hour?)
Answer: Quality over quantity
2. Why can't we build 1000 local sites - i.e. denverdogcollars.com, newyorkdogcollars.com, etc. ?
Answer: Make 1 good website, not 100 crappy ones. And nobody searches for "denver dog collars".
3. Can you optimize our crappy website from 1995 with an archaic content management system?
Answer: Re-design your website first. Or if you are lazy I will optimize as much as possible within the archaic CMS you currently have.
4. So I just need to place 100 crappy articles filled with keywords / bad grammar on my site and I'll rank #1?
Answer: NO! Make 10 great articles that people will link to.

I've seen this interview before, very interesting and the interviewer asks some tough questions. It really gives an insight into the SEOmoz core tenets and the life of Rand. Not much to take away from an SEO strategy perspective but if you want to know more about Rand and SEOmoz - watch this interview. FYI it is over an hour long so budget some time to do so.

Yes - put on your fatigues and join the battle! That would be a nice Youmoz post - sort of like the Ninja SEO thing that I've seen a few times. Thinks like link-bombs and Social Media blitzkrieg come to mind.

And maybe that is what Google is thinking - they are losing some battles but they will win the war with some Spam-nuke they are working on in the Googleplex.

I agree with Himanshu and Nikunjlist, I'm seeing more recommendations from my social circle in Google results too. Matt Cutts is spamming my social circle :) j/k FYI I'm following him in Google reader so its how he is in my social circle.

Citations will still be important though, if the New York Times mentions a hotel in some list they make it will carry more weight than some guy in Tripadvisor telling me how great this hotel is (there is spam on Tripadvisor too). And its possible, probable even that many of my friends didn't visit this hotel and have nothing to say about it.

I did the "birthday party supplies" search and ran the top result in OSE. Top do-follow links: charlotteokay.com, jacksonokay.com, tusconokay.com, fargookay.com... the list goes on. Obvious link farm. All of their top 50 links are from these "local directories".

This post made me think of Oatmeal's widgetbait gone wild fiasco. I'm not sure what is black, grey, or white hat sometimes. Maybe I will wear a camouflage army hat and go to war with my competitors :)

I do my best to be white hat but everyday I look at my competitors links and shake my head while looking at their backlinks. Spam is obviously a huge problem but in my experience a big percentage of the websites I've done research on have crummy links floating around. Google can't penalize everyone lest their search results become terrible, maybe they are focusing more on fighting paid links?

I feel its almost equivalent to direct mail at home. Everyday you get crap in your mail and throw it out - its garbage you say. Until one day you really do need a car wash. Just saying what was once spam in your mailbox became a half-price pizza coupon which you thoroughly enjoyed. Its hard to distinguish between them, for you, me, or a billion dollar search algorithm.

Considering all the options i'd rather have something that I can't find elsewhere. Historical link data is rather difficult, but I think SEOmoz already has some great filters to clean out crappy links. I don't know of any other service on the web that offers historical link analysis (feel free to correct me).

XML Sitemaps are easy to make, Google Analytics data would be convenient but I can always get it directly from GA, keyword research with the keyword difficulty / Adwords combo, and social media monitoring is already accessible / plentiful. Integration is not so important for me but I'm not against it :)

I guess I'm more for seeing something new rather than having a convenience feature. So historical link data and crawl depth are at the top of my wish list. Integration with other existing services is great for saving time but a truly unique feature would stand out and be much more helpful for site audits and SEO strategy.

I only wish I would have upgraded to Elite last month to get grandfathered in at $129. Damn! But I still feel like I got upgraded - I can track 200 more keywords and get all these cool new apps to play with! Weeee!

One option I'd like to see so far - the ability to add a campaign for $x / month. The jump to the next level is much too expensive for my one-man operation but I already have 5 campaigns! I could increase my hourly rate or start an agency but it isn't feasible at the moment.

Either way GREAT JOB SEOMOZ - I tried some other SEO tools and stuck with you guys and you delivered the goods. Slam dunk, touchdown, home run, GOAAAALLLLL !

Mmm Killer content num num num... (cookie monster impression). Nice analogy but for existing sites a lot of times the cookies are already half-baked and there is no chocolate chips (they had no idea chocolate chips make for a really tasty cookie).

However, I will try this analogy for clients with new sites: You see SEO is like making cookies...

It really helps to have some analogies that everyone can relate to. It helps to break down the process into (edible?) pieces for people who don't understand the technical aspects (which is why they need my help).

What a great list, I thought I had found every SEO website out there but I was wrong. I would add - Vertical Measures, Hugo Guzman, and Blue Glass. Vertical Measures even mentioned Rand (i.e. Matthew Broderick) as the winner in a celebrity / SEO look alike contest. Both Vertical Measures and Blue Glass are SEO agencies (and Hugo has an agency too I think) but have quality content on their blogs. Its also good to keep an eye on what the competition is doing for their clients. I also subscribe to the SEOmoz tips / Q&A feed which keeps me up to date with all that juicy stuff too. I have 87 subscriptions in my Google Reader now, I'm wondering when it will implode into a black hole. I even took out regular news feeds such as BBC, they produce too much content everyday and I would spend hours catching up in Google Reader.

Its especially important for companies to own these branded results. These people doing brand name searches must have heard about you or already visited your site. Return visitors and visitors who were referred to your site by a friend are much more likely to purchase products or take the action you are looking for.

In one case with a travel company I'm working with, their brand name isn't unique so there is competition. In this case I found it is helpful to use a geographical identifier i.e. 'Ride Em Cowboy Travel - Montana' which differentiates from the 'Ride Em Cowboy Travel' company in Texas, for example.

Cool experiment, thanks for the data. It looks like Google is using Retweets as a sort of trust factor for twitter. I was wary of using Twitter as a sitemap, but it could help in certain instances. I agree with seo-himanshu in that it would be useful for a news site but otherwise it won't matter too much if your content is indexed in 3 hours or 8 hours. It depends on how time-dependent your information is.

Paras,
Thanks for your reply. I think for sites that have a custom plan like yours that says "call us" definitely you don't want it to be the first one. But for Basecamp, for example, they have the highest price first. I think its called staging, where you create (in the potential customer's mind) a value for your product with the first price they see. So for example on Basecamp they see $149 and think, "oh that is too expensive for me but it must be a good product" - then they pan to the right to see the other plans and think "Oh I can afford $49/month, I'll buy it". The perceived value is what i'm talking about.

As a keen observer of the usage of CRO techniques I can say I've seen a lot. Good examples of CRO to me always include - answers to questions and reassurance for the buyer.

You must anticipate questions the buyer might have (how much does it cost?) - It's free! Such as your example with the Soocial homepage.

And reassurance that they are getting what they expect. As a Basecamp user, I can say the way it is presented - with big, easy to use buttons and clear language - influenced my buying decision. I thought to myself: if their website is clear and easy to use their product must be too.

Regarding service websites: I when there is a big button that says "View our Plans and Pricing". Its usually what I look for first, when it is hard to find I don't stick around long.

I'm curious about your thoughts on the pricing pages. In your opinion, is it better to have the most expensive plan on the left or the cheaper one? I read something about 37 signals doing tests on this and converting better with the most expensive plan on the far left side.

Very interesting findings. I guess Google sees them as separate links - in a long document such as a Wikipedia entry about a popular topic this would be useful or a consolidated set of pages like you described. Thanks for sharing the results of your test, it is very useful!

I'm wondering about the exceptions to the first link rule you mentioned. I thought if a graphic appeared before the first text link, Google would could count the alt text of the graphic. Any evidence of the exception - did I miss something??

Summer,
Thanks for highlighting this under-rated part of the link building process. Building quality links is now more about building quality relationships with people - it has become more like traditional marketing / business development in this way.

I often find myself staring at a blank email message thinking about what to write. I want it to be personal, so I have shied away from templates. But your method seems like a happy medium, and happy mediums make me happy :)

Eventually I want to be like Steven Seagal in Under Seige where he is a former Navy Seal working as a cook and ends up being the only man who can save the day. He doesn't want to use his powers anymore - but sometimes he must. :) So he'd be like the Guardian Angel, The Assassin, and the Cook all rolled into one using Conner's categories. Deadly combination.

I think i'm partly Cook, partly Street Fighter, and partly Matrix. I like to mix it up and try new things so thats the cook part. Street Fighter because i'm self-employed but training hard and learning. Matrix Specialist because I studied Political Science / Economics at university so I don't have trouble making sense of the numbers (except for SERPs of course - damn those ever-changing secret algorithms!).

Links are my throwing stars, killer content is my sword, and SEOmoz is my Ninja tool sharpening thingy / swiss army knife. I think I'm halfway inbetween Student and Ninja SEO according to your scale. My favorite ninja is from Ask A Ninja. He recently did a video for Youtube about private sharing videos. He has ninjafied his SEO too - Top 5 ranking for the keyword 'ninja' :)

Creativity among a variety of sources is the best way to get lasting, quality links now. Buying links can work - but when you stop paying they stop linking. Conversely when the linking site willingly puts your link on their site for a reason other than cold hard cash - its very likely the link will stay there indefinitely.

Social media can indirectly get links through establishing relationships with others interested in your topic.

If your link for 'bridal jewelry' is next to a link with 'paid pills' (true story minus the bridal jewelry part) chances are if it hasn't been devalued or mitigated entirely it will soon.

Nice post, it looks like a great way to better target people in Google Adwords. I haven't been keeping up enough with the things they are doing there. Only some of my clients use Adwords but for those that do I will definitely be using this feature to help them get better CTR and conversion.

Useful and practical post, thank you very much. I've been digging around for information about redirects and this was an elegantly simple guide for SEO use. My favorite part was the dinosaur :)

Would anyone happen to know about 301 redirects with .asp? I'm stumped on that one right now. Its much easier to create .htaccess I think, I haven't found much information about the cases where they don't have .htaccess for whatever reaason. The easiest solution I found in these cases was to use rel=canonical but it won't fix canonical issues from dynamically generated urls. Is there a better way?

I wish you luck with your CMS, it sounds like a good way to use the API. I made this post exactly for people like you, I didn't find a lot of examples of people using the API, I hope you can use my code as a reference if nothing else. Its pretty easy to use, you just need to be sure to formulate the request properly and then sort the data. I had some trouble making a proper request, one thing I overlooked was NOT putting the http:// into the request. At first it wasn't working then I realized I was putting the http:// in there which was incorrect. Good luck with yours.

Nice simple and easy tips, thanks for the post. A lot of things I've been reading lately have been referring to regular expressions and how useful they can be. I'm an amateur with regex but hoping to learn more. Thanks for the nice breakdown of that. I will start emailing out some reports more often as I get better at breaking down the analytics into a better form for clients.

The SEO gods have spoken. I would ritually sacrifice a laptop for you guys to do this again. Great post, I always verify my information across multiple sources and here you go and do it for me. For shame, I was hoping to spend more time reasearching this topic :) . Seriously though, thanks guys.

The way I think about great content is that it must be created with a dual purpose in mind. Content for the search engines is one thing and content for users is another, forging them together can be powerful if done correctly. Considering how traditional media journalists are being downsized left and right, maybe they could find a home at an SEO firm?? :) It seems it is important now more than ever to write engaging, unique content which can be difficult if you have a dry topic. Good writers can't get water from a rock but they can make it rain!

Good work, its fun to see the results of your SEO time being recognized by the search engines. I'm still relatively new to this job as well, a little more than a year but I've learned a lot. Looks like you've learned quite a bit too in your 6 months of work, cudos to you and keep up the good work.

One of the best posts i've seen about this topic. I can't find much info about working with API's. I've just written a YouMoz post (hoping it gets published) with a quick and dirty app I made using the SEOmoz API. I especially liked the Alchemy API - haven't seen it before and it looks very interesting. What do I do with all these tools out there? So many ways to spend my time... (and sometimes money) ..

I haven't seen that list of social media sites, there was a few I wasn't aware of, very useful. I have a client now that is selling artwork online and it is difficult to find a place to promote their goods without being marked as spam.

As for odesk I definitely back your recommendation, I use it and love it. They track time and take screenshots, afterwards giving the employer a chance to review the work and check activity levels. For me its the best way to work online right now, they have a leg up on the competition.

Cheaper isn't always better though, odesk is flooded with cheap labor claiming to be 'SEO experts' and the like when their only strategy is to submit your site to low quality, un-related directories, forums, etc.. For example the client mentioned above,when I checked their backlinks, had one of these 'link-builders' make a link for them by creating a profile on whitney houston's fan website. (Allman Brothers too) What the f*#$ does that have to do with artwork?? Here is another place they got a link: http://pump.hungvuong.net/ ... Not sure what it is (some kind of forum) but it is not relevant or useful. The exact same text and achor text was used for each of these profile links. Moral of the story: get to know these people (oDesk has an interview phase to weed out the baddies) who will be working for/with you.

I'm living an American living in Russia and involved in search marketing back home so I need to see US search results for my clients sites. The results are quite different among google's servers. For example, one of the sites I'm promoting appears on the first page for a keyphrase for most servers but recently has dropped to the third page only on US Google servers. Frustrating because the site is marketed to the US and Canadian markets...